Wonderfull Forever

I just had a moment.

Suddenly, I realized that the happiest times I’ve had are the ones when I was most grateful.

I guess that like a lot of people, I am habituated to saying the cursory “thanks” when someone holds the door for me (or my child), or brings me my morning cup of coffee, or when sending an e-mail (as the obligatory complimentary close, up there with “regards”), or when someone says something nice about my work (or my child).  But what I am talking about is true gratitude, the kind that makes your heart implode or something.

What if I started to see things  the way I do sunsets?

I think I too quickly acclimatize to the loveliest things  in my life so they all neatly settle into the grooves of everyday and then while I am vaguely aware of their existence, I no longer truly see them.  (It is hardly possible to be grateful for things you do not see.)  And, if you are in any way a little like me, you would be spending a much inordinate time looking at that empty bottle and not through it to see the wondrous world of enchanted seahorses and magical starfish.

I’ve seen thousands of sunsets, that’s for sure, but every single time it seems,  it’s never like the ones I’d seen before.

 It is not a particularly beautiful beach, and I know it comes naturally to dwell on the “not” and a lot more effort to try to capture what “is,” but I am now prepared to say “but did you see that great orange ball descending into the edge of the world just before twilight?  I saw it for the first time.”

It’s like capturing the images of strangers whom you haven’t really met and probably never will.  You always see them for the first time, forever.

Having lived in Manila my entire life, I am quite sure I have been here at a beach in Cavite at least a couple of times in my childhood, although I don’t really remember any of those times.  I  probably would have been at the same age as my two younger children whom I am quite certain will not remember, when they get to my age now, that they were in fact here.  What probably would remain embedded in their haze of childhood memories are snippets of Sunday afternoons where we road tripped to somewhere nearly obscure but filled with a dizzy patchwork of frozen ephemerals like a bright orange shirt and an empty snail shell.

I hope none of us will ever really get used to things like these.  I hope we always see them for the first time.

I am grateful for fun times.

How about you?

What are you grateful for, this moment?

Thanks for stopping by! 😉

See you again,

fcg